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Re: The reported PLA 1.2 guideline issue is in regards to the seller and company names associated with your app not reflect the name “COMPANY NAME” in the app or its metadata, as required by section 1.2 of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement.

Our Binary has been rejected by AppStore and we are unable to trace out the exact issue.

The follwing is the reason mentioned by App Review Team of Apple

The reported PLA 1.2 guideline issue is in regards to the seller and company names associated with your app not reflect the name “COMPANY NAME” in the app or its metadata, as required by section 1.2 of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement.

The reported PLA 1.2 guideline issue is in regards to the seller and company names associated with your app not reflect the name “COMPANY NAME” in the app or its metadata, as required by section 1.2 of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement.

It would be appropriate for your app must be published under a seller name and company name that reflects the COMPANY NAME brand.

If you have developed these apps on behalf of a client, please advise your client to add you to the development team of their Apple Developer account.

Once created, you cannot change your seller name or company name in iTunes Connect. For assistance with changing your company name or seller name, you will need to contact iTunes Connect through the Contact Us page.

Once this issue is resolved, we can continue with the review. We look forward to your resubmission.

Your app must be published under a seller name and company name that reflects the Lumique ￼ brand. If you have developed these apps on behalf of a client, please advise your client to add you to the development team of their Apple Developer account.

Once created, you cannot change your seller name or company name in iTunes Connect. For assistance with changing your company name or seller name, you will need to contact iTunes Connect through the Contact Us page.

Same problem here as well, submitting app first time under an individual developer account.

The name of my app is "mypal" and it is purely a personal name and not a company name. The App Store has another "myPAL Player" app. I'm trying to seek clarification on if that conflicts or something? Otherwise it's quite ambigious.

I might be able to help on this. I just got my app approved and had the same reason.

You need to make sure, that if your app is called XYZ and you are the owner 123, that 123 owns all copyright for the app and it's content within. If the content is third-party make sure you comment this in comments box. It's quite reasonable, as I might upload an app called Windows for iOS and do not even own the copyright for this brand. Also, make sure you write the correct name etc. in the copyright box, who owns the brand. It's not the app name, but the publisher or if you develop for someone, it's his company/client name.

I don't think it's that complictaed with Apple, you just need to be straight forward.

thanks for the info. I'm having the same problem. Do you have any concrete suggestions to fixing this problem. It just happened to me and I was just fixing a bug in an already released app. I'm an individual developer and developing my own apps. the link in the Apple rejection notice points to the wrong explanation!! I filed an appeal - just that I'd like some guidance on how to resolve this. Maddening!!! Any tangible insight is most appreciated. thanks

I've been pouring through this and I don't see where to fix this. I own all of the content and I've even put the app name along with my company name in the copyright box. still rejected with the same cryptic response.

My company name is xyz and my app is 1243. I have several apps on the app store with different names. I cannot believe that Apple wants you to have a separate company name for each product!!?????

Please help me, We have the same issue, we have a company account and we want to upload "On one call" app. This is medical app. And We developed this app on behalf of a client. But now the problem is that client doesn't have the Apple account. So he told us that you just upload this app from your account. But now the app store reject the app

"Thank you for your resubmission. Upon further review, we still noticed that the seller and company names associated with your app do not reflect the name “On one call” in the app or its metadata, as required by Guideline 5.2.1 of the App Store Review Guidelines."

We have also confusion that there is also available app “One Call”. Isn’t that reason they reject the app?

Me to! this is so confusing.. do I need to change my application name so its contain my Company name (example 123 - XYZ) ? or do I need change the bunddle id in my app (my bunddle id currently doest have my company name in it) is it related? anyone have the answer?

Ya, this completely blows. We do contracted work for other companies. Switching hundreds of apps to separate developer accounts is completely unreasonable. The customers also want nothing to do with dealing with accounts. They just want an app.

Agreed. Not only that but having to pay for that yearly fee (although not much IMHO). But when you have to multiply by a couple hundred apps or and then include the man hours required to manage those accounts things start to add up quickly.

I have the same situation. Apples requires the creation of developer accounts for each company. But it's just not possible. Companies do not want to create their own accounts. They have no resources and time. Why would Apple do that? Why do they do it? It is not correct. And most importantly, what to do now? You need to prove that the application should be in my developer account.

What to specify in the application? What to write in the copyright line?

Why does Apple do it? Think about what happens when Business A goes to App Developer W to get an app written and put in the store, decides later that they'd rather have Developer X work on the app instead, and Developer W says "No."

It's the same amount of work for Business A to have control of the account that the app is hosted on, and hire a developer to manage the account for them. And it eliminates the need for Apple to intervene in petty contract disputes or intervene to give A back control of the app.

It all globally. It is for large companies. And we're talking about a small company. A small company has time and money to use your developer account. A small company is advantageous to give it all to the developer and not to think about it. Have a small company, no opportunities and time for all this. Example. If the company orders the development of a site in the Internet? She doesn't have to have your own server. The company uses a server developer. And applications the same.

I believe the true issue here is branding. Once an app name is registered on the app store (published or not) it is effectively locked in for that one app. No other app can have a name resembling that "brand". The Apple developer account that registered that name is the only one that can transfer that name to another developer account.

I can see Apple's concerns, but Apple doesn't seem to be concerned about the developers nor the monetary impact our clients are facing due to this rule. While $99/year is not much by itself, but after you multiply that by 150+ and all the man hours required to manage the individual developer accounts things start to add up quickly.

I believe there are far more effective ways of dealing with branding issues. Having to provide legal documentation with the app stating we have permissions to said brand is one alternative. Another is to offer a "company" portal that our clients can register their brand(s) within Apple. From there we would be given express permissions to use their branding similar to how the MFi product plan ids work. If they don't want us to develop for them any longer they can remove us from their list.

We have the same issue all of a sudden. We have hundreds of apps in the app store for SMB clients. These clients are not interested in an Apple Developer account, setting it up would be too costly time wise. It makes sense for large organizations, but not at all for these type companies. It kills this business of being able to provide apps for smaller organizations. Google Play resolves this by offering the possibility of adding a written "Declaration of Consent" signed by our customers authorizing us to publish on behalf of them.

I also have the same problem and have appealed the Review Team but haven't get any clear response about that 1.2 point. I thougt it has to be with web-shops embedded in web views, but I couldn't confirm it as there is no a regular pattern of rejection.

I have been trying to get a clarification, but everytime I ask Apple for advise, I get the same boilerplate answer without any tangible advise.

I have one developer account and multiple apps for sale with different names. This has worked fine for over four years.

Is Apple actually suggesting that you now need a separate developer account with a name matching the app name??? I hope not, and I can't imagine that they would do that. Not only would it be cost prohibitive for small developer, but it would be very difficult to manage.

At this stage, I don't know why Apple is so hesitant or incapable to provide any answers. Apple are you listening? When I ask for clarification, all I receive is the same boilerplate response directing me to the same unhelpful section of documentation. It's been two weeks now and I cannot get my app approved and it used to be approved.

This is crazy.

Apple please help. You are going to drive me to Android. I don't know if that's any better, but I'm dead in the water here with no help from Apple.

We have encountered the same issue, we now have to set up a developer account for every new client! We should be able to provide a letter of consent from the client to allow us to use the name, logo and URL's of the client which is sufficient for google play, why not apple.

This is a massive change and will trun many off developping apps.

Let me know if you have anyway around this or have heard any news about what might happen.

Same problem here! We can't set up a developer account for every new client! And, more important, we can't give control of our apps to the client because of commercial reasons! What happens if the client does not pay? How can we remove the app from AppStore if the client does not pay?

APPLE: we should be able to provide a letter of consent from the client! Our clients are seriously considering to migrate to other platforms!

Updating my application innocently change where it appears company name, my account is developer not company, since that change was a week of struggle to publish the update.

what happened? Began to jump that rejection, apparently if you have a own account developer, you can publish applications but if the idea is yours and does not belong to any brand or company. If your idea belongs to a brand you must have the permission and / or that company registered in apple.

suggestions:

1- Add all the information in the metadata before sending for review, if you answer, apple answers 1 of 10 and does not solve anything. Directly prepare it for review again by adding what you requested in the resolution center.

2- the name: if the name of your app looks like the one of another registered, they can reject the binary, search well in which app store is the problem, in my case it was in English (USA), that error is The one that mentions the problem of brand.

3- My application is about a free service. But an item in my application made them think that it was a business, I had to change the item (in this case apple sent me a capture) this is the error that says that you have to be registered as a business.

4- Have patience is a round trip until they convince themselves that you are not making this application on behalf of another company.

In the course of the week I skipped all the rejection below but have a solution you just add in the metadata what you are asked and expect them to be convinced. Once you get into that wheel you have to convince the guys. there is no other solution.

From a developement perspective, I would like highlight the issues with "PLA 1.2":

Apparantly it says that the "The seller and company names associated with your app do not reflect the app name". A lot of businesses are registered as "Sole Trader". So according to Apple Developer Program, the client has to be enrolled for Personal Account.

If you are an individual or SOLE PROPRIETOR/SINGLE PERSON BUSINESS, sign in with your Apple ID to get started. You’ll need to provide basic personal information, including your legal name and address.

##

So if the owner of the business is enrolled as an Apple Developer (Personal Account), then he has to do the following:

- Create Signing Certificate using a public/private key-pair

- Create Provisioning Profiles

- Create Push notification entitlements

- Create AppStore listing in iTunes Connect

- Submit the app for review

- And many more (as you know)

As you know creating these certificates and provisioning profiles are not easy even for an experienced developer. So most of it is done by XCode, but the small business owner doesn't know XCode or even simple programming. Even if we were to teach him, he may not have a Mac (as XCode only runs on Mac), so he might have to invest in a Mac as well. Even if he were to do all this, we are afraid that it might take months for someone without any programming background to learn the essential basics of IOS development.

Please Apple, make changes to PLA 1.2, such that chefs/hairdressers/lawyers etc are not forced to enroll for Apple Developer Account. Now-a-days a lot depends on having an app especially for small businesses. Please consider this letter to represent the voices of 1000s of small-businesses out there, who are eager to get their businesses on the AppStore. Please make it easy for them to have their own app.

If AppStore starts rejecting app on this basis, then gaints like Uber and JustEat will have their apps listed for sure, but small-businesses will not stand a chance against them.

It has been rejected many times for different reasons. One of those was PLA 1.2.

After a long e-mail conversation, one day Apple phoned me and start a conversation to explain the reasons of the App rejection.

Here is what they told me (and then wrote me on my Apple Developer Account discussion) about PLA 1.2:

"To be in compliance, unique apps developed for individual pharmacies..." (the rejected App was for a pharmacy but i think it can be read as "client") "...would need to be submitted under a seller name and company name that reflects the individual pharmacy."

because of this tipical crypting way to explain their reasons, I asked for more clearness. Here is what they answered:

"To clarify, unique apps developed for individual pharmacies will need to be submitted under a seller name and company name that reflects the individual pharmacy as required by App Store Review Program License Agreement PLA 1.2."

So, finally, I think that with the new PLA 1.2, if a Developer Agency wants to publish an App on behalf of a client, a new Apple Developer Account is needed.

This has been my experience. After months of fighting Apple their response is consistent, although a bit biased. Yes, if you are a dev company you will need to setup new accounts for you clients. That part of their answer was consistent regardless of the fact we have distribution agreements with our clients. The biased part of this is that it appears that only a couple divisions of the app store apps are having this rule enforced. Medical (our industry) is one of those areas (or, so they said in a phone call).

We ran into the same issue. Basically it's a trademark issue. I'm not arguing if it's right or wrong. But the solution:

Either you have to list in the developer account of your customer.

Or legally acquire the trademark and brand name of your customer (may be limited for the purpose of AppStore/PlayStore/Digital Marketing)

I know point 2 sounds a bit off. I agree it is.

Let's take an example:

Developer: FooBar SoftwareApp: No1 Pharma

In AppStore listing, the seller of the app is the developer. So from the user point of view, if you look at the listing on AppStore, it would say the app "No1 Pharma" is being sold by "FooBar Software". This doesn't sound right.

Another case:

The publishing rights of Harry Potter Books (acc. to wiki) is owned by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Scholastic (US)

Developer: Bloomsbury PublishingApp: Harry Potter

This will sound right, in spite of the fact that the seller name and app name did not match. The listing would read "Bloomsbury Publishing" is the seller of the app "Harry Potter". This sounds right. So Bloomsbury can publish all the trademarks/brands it owns as different apps in it's developer account.

Perhaps AppStore might choose to differentiate the developers from sellers. Because developers are not sellers. That's the reality.

Let's say IBM develops the "Harry Potter" app for "Bloomsbury", then the listing should read:

>Perhaps AppStore might choose to differentiate the developers from sellers. Because developers are not sellers. That's the reality.

The reality is that as long as the dev can evidence rights to sell, differentiation plays no role. Since day one, the dev agreement has stated that should apple ask for proof of rights to use any of the app's content, the dev should be prepared to show it. Apple only needs to apply the existing agreement, not come up with additional qualifiers, which typically open more holes than they close.

As always, bad actors in the store have now apparently forced Apple's hand. They deserve the credit for this latest enforcement and any ire from devs otherwise playing by the rules that may unfortunately feel the same heat.

We have been setting up all our clients with their own developer accounts, transfer those apps to our client accounts, and submitting updates to our clients accounts. This has been a huge shift in how we do business and has become a bit of a nightmare in terms of managing those apps for our clients.

Regardless, it is still a crap-shoot with Apple should our client be a holdings company that owns multiple brands. We had one client that has 12 brands (we white-labeled our app for each brand) and 6 were rejected for PLA 1.2 and the other 6 were approved...

After yet another round of Apple Repeals and phone calls we are now told that a new developer guideline published at Apple's dev conference exists stating the following:

guideline 4.2.9: Apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected.

Apple said we are ok on PLA 1.2 now, but now our apps will be rejected due to 4.2.9 as our apps are considered a "commercialized template", white-labeled app. We provide this service to give our clients (small and medium sized businesses) a collective resource pool to be able to compete technologically with the large businesses that can afford a full dev team and to have their own branded space on the app stores. However, Apple has now decided that providing this level of service to our clients is no longer viable. They are saying that we can only provide one app per client (translated, developer account), but may still get rejected due to 4.2.9.

As a warning to all who provide white-labeled apps to your clients you will be subject to app rejections according to this guideline.

To be honest, this is really a total letdown to the industry. I am located in Indonesia, where I am charging the amount of IDR 1,000,000 / year for iOS & Android app for small businesses like restaurants, cafe, shops, etc. That amounts to only around USD75 / year. Anything more than that will cause clients to not wanna make apps anymore. I even create apps for businesses for FREE just to gain their trust, with ad-supported content to cover our costs. Now thanks to Apple's new 1.2 PLA, we had to ask clients to register an Apple Developer Program at $99/year? The price alone is already killing my business. Sales are now dwindling more than 50% of what we used to earn. I am only offering Android app to customers now, without the possibility of iOS app unless clients are able/willing to pay for the $99 / year ADP membership.

So basically what I am saying:

Indonesia is a country where USD 100 - 150 is a common labor wages average. Charging for website more than that has a high decline percentage, not to mention apps.

1.2 PLA forcing clients to have $99 / year ADP membership will become the main source of decline.

I have a 60-70% rate of biz owners who don't have credit cards and/or unwilling to pay $99/year even if they have credit cards. Indonesia is a country with high distrust concern towards CC usage, Paypal, online payment, etc.

I have client who has like 20 brands (running many e-commerce brands), who will never ever pay for $99 / year x 20 brands = $1,980 / year. She just said this is crazy.

Android app market is looking more profitable now that iOS App Store looks like it's gearing to become more elitist.

I will keep watching on this thread, any help to solve this issue is deeply appreciated. Meanwhile, it will be a bye-bye from us to Apple Store. Good luck guys!

Hi, I have the same problem. My app is a medical type of app, which allows users to select a hospital and login with their credentials within the hospital. The content is coming from each hospital and isn’t owned by the company I’m working for. However, we have the agreement with these hospitals to enable the connection usage of their content and data. How can I fix this problem. Please advise. I can’t open an account for each hospital as then Apple would reject the app if it is the same for each hospital. The whole point of the app is to have an app as a service and to have one access end point for all agreed hospitals.

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